Some vehicles have an internal combustion engine that combusts a mixture of air and fuel within one or more combustion chambers to produce a mechanical output. The internal combustion engine can include a sliding camshaft that controls how much the valves in the engine are opened, which controls the fuel/air mixture that is combusted to produce the mechanical output.
The sliding camshaft includes a camshaft lobe that is slidable over a base shaft. The base shaft defines a hole that receives a spring before the camshaft lobe is slid over the base shaft. After the spring is placed into the hole, a ball is disposed over the spring and a tool is utilized to press the ball into the hole to compress the spring. As the tool maintains the position of the ball in the hole, the camshaft lobe is slid over the base shaft. Once the camshaft lobe is in the desired position over the base shaft, the tool can be removed. The spring and the ball are completely separate components and positioning these components relative to each other, and utilizing the tool, can be cumbersome.